The Psychological Period
Kardec brings to light the fact that Spiritism entered, after the initial moments of purely material manifestations, in the Psychological Period.
He disagrees, however, that human science would be closed: far from that, it would still have a lot to develop in the future.
To better understand the article, we need to understand the meaning of psychology in the context of Allan Kardec and in the current context.
Current Psychology
Psychology, nowadays, with a materialistic therapeutic characteristic, has 3 aspects:
| behaviorism |
| Its object of study is behavior. This psychological theory holds that the psychology human or animal can be objectively studied through observation of their actions, that is, by observing behavior. Behaviorists believe that all behaviors are the result of experience and conditioning. |
| Psychology of form (Gestalt) |
| It is a doctrine of psychology based on the idea of understanding the whole so that there is a perception of the parts. The purpose of this model is to associate cognitive practices with the patient's emotions and feelings, so that he can see new ways of facing difficult life situations. |
| Analytical Psychology (Psychoanalysis) |
| Analytical psychology, also known as Jungian psychology or complex psychology, is a branch of knowledge and practice of Psychology, started by Carl Gustav Jung. She emphasizes the importance of the psyche, the unconscious, archetypes and the individuation process. |
Psychology in the context of Kardec
In Kardec's context, Psychology did not have the materialistic therapeutic characteristic of today: it was a moral science, spiritualist, inserted in the context of Rational Spiritualism, and its main objective was to investigate and analyze the natural laws that govern human nature, including experimentally.
In this context, Psychology understood the human being as a being constituted of body and soul. The soul, which would survive the body, was the primary cause of the psyche, which was not just a material effect of chemistry and stimuli.
Before Allan Kardec, or before Rational Spiritualism, traditional philosophy dealt with the soul in a speculative way, through systems created by thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz and Kant. The advent of experimental psychology opened a new path: that of the philosophical sciences, which Spiritism complementary. In the words of Allan Kardec:
Spiritism, in its turn, comes to give its theory. It relies on experimental psychology; he studies the soul, not only during life, but after death; he watches her in a state of isolation; he sees it acting in freedom, whereas ordinary philosophy sees it only in union with the body, subject to the constraints of matter, which is why it often confuses cause and effect.
Allan Kardec – RE – May 1864
Psychology is the science that studies mental processes (feelings, thoughts, reason) and human behavior. It derives from the Greek words: psique, which means “soul” and logia, which means “the study of”.
And how does Spiritism study the soul? Through the spiritist phenomena that, however, are no longer studied just for entertainment or curiosity, but precisely with the aim of investigating the natural laws that govern human nature!
And why did it all end?
The end of the psychological period, or rather, the twilight of the Philosophical Sciences, according to Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo, was due to the union of the power of the Church with the Dictatorial State, which were hostile to the enlightenment of society and against the liberal doctrine defended by Rational Spiritualism.
It is important to say: liberalism in this context does not refer to unbridled freedom, the fruit of selfishness, but to a freedom guided by reason and enlightened by conscience.
Allied to this, a strong materialist movement begins to rise in Germany, around 1860, and ends up invading France, where it removes the Moral Sciences from the official chair.
It's in Brazil? Rational Spiritualism, which formed the first philosophical school established in the country and which came to be implanted in the teaching curricular structure, also faced
[…] adverse conditions that the first individuals aware of the original theory faced when they intended to create a Brazilian spiritist movement. A combative Church, struggling to maintain its privileges and the power that had been ebbing away since the Second Empire. And a materialist scientific current, rocked by the retrograde thoughts of Comte and German physiologists, such as Vogt, Moleschott, Virchow and Büchner. The rational spiritualist current, bravely defended by the leadership of Gonçalves de Magalhães and Porto-Alegre, who became disseminators of animal magnetism and later of Spiritism, despite infecting teachers and students of their time, was soon silenced and forgotten. In fact, it was not possible to establish in our lands the favorable scenario that Kardec found in France
Paulo Henrique de Figueiredo – Autonomy: the untold story of Spiritism
The result of all this is what we see today: a totally materialistic society, focused on the pleasures of the flesh and forgetful of spirituality, afraid of life and desperate before the grave!
What to expect for the future?
Only the best, because, in the same way that Rational Spiritualism was born in opposition to the materialism of the time, we are now experiencing a swarm of initiatives like ours and even better ones, which will certainly produce, in a few years, very important fruits for this time. of changes we are going through!
Remember Kardec, with which we end the article:
These excesses, however, have their utility, their reason for being. They frighten society, and good always comes out of bad; it takes the excess of evil to make the need for the best feel, without this man would not get out of his inertia.
(KARDEC, [RE] 1868, p. 201)